Judgement Day (1999)

I was looking to get more Ice-T on the site, and I saw that this was on Tubi. In addition to him, it has Mario Van Peebles, was written by Fred Olen Ray, Cole S. McKay was stunt coordinator, and has stars from two of my favorite shows, Barney Miller and Beverly Hills, 90210. In that sense, it was less about whether I should review it, and more about why I hadn't done it already! In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Judgement Day is about an asteroid that's heading for earth in three days. Higher-ups Max Gail and James Eckhouse want to use a device developed by Linden Ashby to intercept and destroy it, the problem is, Mario Van Peebles and his religious cult have kidnapped Ashby because they don't want the asteroid stopped. Gail thinks he has a leak in his department, so he gets FBI agent Suzy Amis to track Ashby down, but she can't do it alone, so she gets Ice-T out of prison, because he has a score to settle with Van Peebles himself. It's a race against time now, will it be relief accompanied by smiles and hardy handshakes in the war room, or doom and destruction?

You can probably guess the outcome, and to be fair, who wants to be deprived of those smiles of relief and hardy handshakes after the planet's been saved? Especially knowing Wojo and Jim Walsh are in the war room hoping Linden Ashby's device works. On the way there, there's almost a 48 Hours interplay between Amis and Ice-T as they track down Van Peeble's base of operations, which is a nice twist on the disaster movie that I'm surprised The Asylum hasn't used more often. That said, the Fred Olen Ray story has that feel of a few story templates fused together, and it might not have worked, except for the prodigious cast I listed above. For example, in addition to Van Peebles, Tom "Tiny" Lister is his right hand man. A rival drug dealer Ice-T and Amis go to for info is played by Coolio. Amis's boyfriend is Larry Poindexter--and no, unfortunately he doesn't drive a car while blasting Guns N' Roses' "Move to the City." Once you have all these names, it's just a matter of getting in and out in 90 minutes, having a few good action moments spread throughout, and then letting those names cook, and I feel like this one does all that.

We're at 19 movies now for Ice-T, and I think this might be my favorite of his performances. Also his screen time in this is probably more than four or five of the other movies of his we've covered combined, which was refreshing too. He's in the Hall of Fame for a reason, and this reinforces that. The moment he's onscreen, you know it's going to be good, but then there's the mix of hard edge and off-beat and quirky that allows him to thrive in the 48 Hours paradigm. The other thing about Ice-T is he was a rapper first, and this movie uses one of his songs, which is also fantastic. I don't know if between rights issues or studio time if he recorded a fresh track that it's realistic to expect every Ice-T movie to have his music in it, but it would be nice if more of them did, because it was a great touch here. We haven't done one of his films in two years, so I need to rectify that and get more of his stuff up more frequently, because he's always a great time.

I'm going to try not to go too fast and furious (Vin Diesel style) as I get through the other names in this, but there's a lot, so buckle up. First, among Hall of Famers, we have Cole S. McKay as stunt coordinator, plus he's in one scene which you can see above. We're at 65 for him now, and I have at least one other movie of his in the can that I need to review, so he'll be up to 66 soon enough. Then we have Fred Olen Ray as screenwriter. I think this is the fifth movie of his we've done that he wrote, but because he didn't direct this doesn't add to that total for him, which I think stands at 17, second-most all time among directors. Mario Van Peebles is great as the baddie, he gives you everything you want there, and is a name we always enjoy seeing on the site. Same for the late Tom "Tiny" Lister, who plays Van Peebles's righthand man, and gives you everything you want in that role. Then we have Linden Ashby, someone we've seen a few times and probably should be tagged. His part's not as big, but it's vital, so it was good they cast someone like him in the role. I mentioned Larry Poindexter. He probably gets it the worst in this, but that's okay, he'll always have American Ninja 2. Then as a big Barney Miller fan, how do you not love Wojo? We've seen him here before too, in particular DC Cab comes to mind, but here he's great as higher up tasked with stopping the asteroid. Fans of Firestorm (not sure if there are any of those out there) would know Suzy Amis, who ended up marrying James Cameron after this and hasn't done another movie since. If you're going to go out, why not have it be an Ice-T DTV flick written by Fred Olen Ray and directed by John Terlesky. That's right, Deathstalker II and Chopping Mall's John Terlesky directed this, as he did another Van Peebles/Ice-T film we did a couple years ago, Guardian. Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the late Coolio in a one-scene cameo. I don't know how many movies aren't improved by a Coolio one-scene cameo, and this film certainly wasn't an exception.

One name you may have noticed that's missing above is James Eckhouse, aka Jim Walsh from Beverly Hills, 90210. I wanted to give him his own paragraph, because I think he's one of the best TV dads of all time, but he never gets included on that list. Maybe that's because he was a little young to be playing a father to kids born in the early 70s, considering he was only born in 1955, but I always loved how he and Carol Potter's Cindy Walsh were the two grounding forces on the show. That might be why the show wrote them out eventually, because I think they wanted to untether the kids somewhat and let them find their way without the Walshes there to provide stability. Who knows what the reason was, but I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with James Eckhouse's Jim Walsh against any other TV dad out there, other than maybe Hugh Beaumont's Ward Cleaver and Robert Reed's Mike Brady. So, here's to you James Eckhouse, you're one of the great ones.

Finally, we get two common movie lines in this. The first one is so common Will at Exploding Helicopter has a Letterboxd list for movies that feature it, and that's "we've got company," which we get when Tom "Tiny" Lister is trying to drive off with Van Peebles, his wife (Shireen Crutchfield), and their bounty, Linden Ashby, when Lister notices the cops are coming and gives us the line. The second one was "it's the 90s." Anyone who lived through the 90s knows what this means, anything that was considered outside the bounds of conservative, buttoned-up, Reagan 80s culture was now given a grudging acceptance with those three little words, "it's the 90s." Women standing up for themselves? "Hey, it's the 90s, am I right?" Gay people demanding more rights? "I mean, to each their own, it's the 90s after all." Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope? "Okay, let's not get carried away..." Here it's within an off-beat, quirky, and slightly homophobic back and forth between Ice-T and Suzy Amis that we get the line, when Ice-T asks why she's not married, then asks if she's a lesbian, to which he explains he doesn't have a problem with it if she is, because "it's the 90s." Maybe we need a little bit more "it's the 90s" in our society today, because, man "it's the 2020s" covers a whole host of bonkersness that I don't even want to start on.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great deal. The names alone sell it, but in a sea of thumbnails on a streaming services, sometimes that's all you need. Hell, it's the 2020s, am I right?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221309

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Diamond Cartel (2015)

This is it, post number 1300! Not only that, but Mr. Don "The Dragon" Wilson becomes the eighth member of the 40 Club, and the fourth member to reach the club primarily as an actor. In trying to find the right film, I went with this star-studded bonkersfest from Kazakhstan, which has also been covered by Ty and Brett from Comeuppance--who have been telling me I needed to do this one for some time, so good to finally make it happen!

Diamond Cartel involves a deal between (I think) crime boss Armand Assante and (maybe) crime boss Michael Madsen, that's been brokered by Don "the Dragon" Wilson. As happens with most deals at the beginnings of movies, this deal goes bad, in this case because of an ambush. Among those ambushers is young lady Aliya (Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova), who takes the money and tries to run off with her boyfriend. Now we don't know who to trust. Assante wants his money. Rival crime boss Cary Tagawa wants Assante's money. Wilson wants Assante to pay him. And then when things can't get any wackier, our young couple get to the coast to get a boat out of dodge, and none other than Peter O'Toole is there to help them escape.

Where do we start with this one? We got a dubbed Wilson, a dubbed Olivier Gruner, and a dubbed Peter O'Toole. The plot is all over the place--I made it look pretty straight forward, but, like the Aliya character is a dealer at Assante's casino, and he sets her up so she owes him a lot of money, but instead of being under his thumb, a guy she grew up with gets her stuck in with Tagawa's gang so she can be trained as a sniper. I'm sorry, what? And when she tells the boyfriend this after they're reunited, he's angry with her about it? Later when she thinks he's agreed to give Assante all the money so he leaves them alone, she shoots him. Luckily he doesn't die? This is like a modern companion to White Fire, it's that bonkers, and features a big diamond too. Plus the names are prodigious. In addition to the ones I've mentioned, we also had Tom "Tiny" Lister and Bolo Yeung, because why wouldn't we? (More on Bolo Yeung later.) Is the action good? I don't know, I don't know that value judgements like "good" or "bad" make sense with something like this, you just go with it, buy the ticket, take the ride, and wake up in Astana--just make sure to check that both of your kidneys are intact!

The 40 Club for Mr. Wilson, one of the best to ever do it; and a very circuitous route to get here, as he's one of the few to ever have tags removed because films that IMDb said he was in, like Siege of Firebase Gloria, we later found out he wasn't. But we're here now, we've made it, and for as bonkers as this film is, including the dubbed voice, it might be a fitting film for his 40 Club entry because he's here strictly due to the name he's created for himself all these years. As a kid, when I was first learning what DTV movies were, he was one of the first names I gravitated to, you knew if his face and name were on the tin, that you were in for a great time. At this point he does more supporting roles like this than he does starring roles, which I'm okay with considering how many great films he's given us. The 40 Club has been a long time coming, but we got there, and there isn't a DTV star who's more deserving.

Among the many other names in this, the star is Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova, who plays Aliya. The problem is, between all the name actors that needed screentime, and the story that seems to be shoehorning all kinds of stuff in, we lose her as the lead for chunks of time. She's also the narrator--at least we think, or her narration could be dubbed too. The thing is, the left-turn-ski stuff we get with her character, when she's telling her boyfriend how she was missing for two years because she had to escape Armand Assante by becoming an assassin for Cary Tagawa, it's not as ridiculous as White Fire's "give a woman at a bar plastic surgery so she looks like Ginty's sister, and then Ginty has sex with her" storyline, but it's ridiculous enough, and I don't know how you sell that, but she does her darndest. I saw on IMDb that she did another Kazakhstan action production, this time starring Vinnie Jones, but no one else with him. Michael Madsen must've been too busy I guess, but based on this performance, there are a lot of direct to video movies here in the States that could use her, so perhaps this won't be the last time we see her.

This film has two other Hall of Famers, Bolo Yeung and Olivier Gruner, the 11th and 25th tag for each respectively. Again, more on Yeung in a second, but the fact that Gruner is only 5 away from the 30 Club is a big deal. And as bonkers as this movie is, check out screenwriter Richard Pierce's appearances on the Comeuppance podcast to hear some great stories about making Sector 4: Extraction with him. To round out everyone else, Madsen is now at 15 films, Armand Assante is at 7--which I couldn't believe we'd done that many of his films!--, Cary Tagawa is at 14, and Tom "Tiny" Lister is at 8 films. And then, craziest of crazy, we have one tag now for Peter O'Toole, right? Actually, I forgot that I also reviewed Supergirl during my DTVC Wild Card series look at comic book films. In 2019 my friend and I saw Lawrence of Arabia in the theater, and now I'm seeing him here, dubbed by someone who may or may not have had a stroke, in what ended up being his final film performance. It's always amazing who we end up finding in the world of DTV.

As if this film couldn't get anymore bonkers, according to the IMDb trivia, Bolo Yeung requested that a cat be present in his fight scene near the end of the film, as a tribute to Bruce Lee and his fight with Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon, which also has a cat onlooker. I believe this one was CGI, which, as you may know if you've been on here enough, I'm fully in favor of CGI animals being used in films. Cats want to relax, run around and chase things, and eat, possibly with some head scritches and pets mixed in. As much as I'd enjoy a nice Bolo Yeung fight, for a cat, it's really not all that important, and I respect that and think we all should as well. I do think though if you're going to go CGI cat, why not go full Sebastian from Josie and the Pussycats, right? Maybe have him laugh at them, or put a fishbowl on his head and go snorkeling. Just a thought, but even as simply an onlooker, cats always add value to any film they're in. Why more DTV filmmakers don't add them, especially CGI ones, is beyond me. It's easy points with me. Two simple rules to get you a recommendation: stay under 90 minutes, and add cats.

I figured we'd do a bonus paragraph for Mr. Wilson on getting to the 40 Club, and on us getting to 1300 posts. When I started this site in 2007, I never thought I'd be here 18 years later still plugging away at it, or that the posts would still be getting the kind of readership and reception they still do, especially with me taking a four-year hiatus in the middle. After all the people I've met along the way, the next best thing has been to go through so many films from stars like Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who I love. Some I'd seen before I started the site, like some of the Bloodfist films, but many were things I'd never heard of; and if it wasn't for Wilson, I probably wouldn't be reviewing this gem, but here we are, and I'm still enjoying it. So here's to you Mr. Wilson on making it to the 40 Club; and here's to you, everyone who's still with us after all these years. I wouldn't have kept the train moving--or gotten it back on the tracks in 2019--if it wasn't for the support and readership, so thank you very much for that, it means the world, and hopefully we're all still here for the next 1300 posts!

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now this is on Fawesome here in the States, after sitting in my Tubi queue for about five years then getting removed by them. You never know when a film like this will get bounced, but luckily the name recognition tends to keep it on at least one of the free streamers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2538778

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Renegades (2022)

I'd been waiting on this one since I reviewed Nemesis (2021), but unfortunately ended up waiting a bit too long, as the screener screenwriter Tom Jolliffe had Shogun Films send me unfortunately ended up in my spam folder. Luckily I decided to check there two weeks later, found it, and am now able to make this review happen. 

Renegades has the great Lee Majors as a former Green Beret who's murdered by a gang run by Louis Mandylor, after Majors tries to get them to leave his daughter, Patsy Kensit, alone. This is right after he helps Nick Moran, a down on his luck former special forces soldier whose father served with Majors, and when Moran hears of the murder, he goes to Majors's former fellow soldiers, Billy Murray, Ian Ogilvy, and Paul Barber, so they can exact their revenge on Mandylor. At the same time, Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott is a police detective who's been trying to take Mandylor down, and when she discovers that Moran and crew are going after Mandylor, she has a decision to make: stop them so she can do her job and let the law handle it, or stand back and see if these older former soldiers can do what the law can't. Will they prevail?

This was fantastic. When I reviewed Nemesis earlier this year, both Jonathan Sothcott and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott told me if I enjoyed that, I'd love this, and they were right. Simple concept: evil, ruthless baddie, against a fun, ragtag group of underdog heroes that you can't help rooting for, and I think this would've been great on its own if that's all this was; but from there, the performances were great, even from the cameos like Danny Trejo and Michael Pare; plus the way the story grew organically, allowing for the nuance to develop in certain aspects, like what Nick Moran's character was going through as a former soldier trying to make it in civilian life. It's the kind of thing a churn-and-burn DTV actioner wouldn't have the bandwidth to pull off, but here it's handled with a level of depth and allowed to flourish in a way I didn't come in expecting. There were other aspects I appreciated as well, like how we get the scene of Mandylor beating up a rival gang member he captured cut with and juxtaposed with the scene of Moran's character talking to the other guys about what he's been going through, trying to move onto civilian life after the war. It was like we had two distinct forms of intensity, one that's more common in an action film, and one that we might see more in an indie drama, and we're shuttling back and forth between both. As a device I liked it, because it allowed those more dramatic elements to flourish without weighing the film down in what is ultimately an action film. This might not be the best film for Christmas, but considering we all get the 26th off this year, I can't think of a better way for us Yanks to celebrate Boxing Day than to fire this one up.

When I reviewed Nemesis I was really big on Nick Moran's performance, and he came back in this and was even better. The opening of the film is anchored by him, and he really leans into who that character is, so it was great to see him hit that out of the park. As I mentioned above, I also liked the way the story moved organically, it allowed Moran's character's past to take on a depth that we wouldn't see in most DTV flicks, and I think that's important. My wife and I were watching an old episode of Emergency! recently, and it had the trope of the crazed Vietnam vet who's violent and seeing ghosts, and while we've come a long way in our depiction of veterans in popular media, the idea of the combat vet suffering from PTSD is one that's often handled in films in a way that's too reductive, which then often leads it to being exploitative. The fact that this film didn't do that with Moran's character was refreshing, but I also think a sign of how the people working at Shogun Films not taking the churn-and-burn approach to film making can give us something like this more nuanced, three-dimensional hero, so I'm looking at it and saying "this isn't the usual bearded, grimacing, white guy former special forces dude I'm used to seeing, this guy has me pulled in and invested, and I'm ready to see him and everyone else through the rest of this film." When I talked with screenwriter Tom Jolliffe about his previous film When Darkness Falls, and the previous Shogun film Nemesis, he mentioned the slow burn aspect both of those films had. I think Tom's screenplay here does a great job of drawing on that slow burn aspect enough to let things grow organically, even if the action kicks in sooner than it does in those others; but for the slow burn to work, even in the more limited capacity in which it's used here, it needs a performance like Moran's, plus the directing and editing that trusts it'll all work, and we definitely get all of it.

Speaking of the directing, Daniel Zirilli is a name that's popped up on our site quite a bit, so when I found out he was working with Shogun Films and Jonathan Sothcott on this, I was excited to see what would come of that collaboration. The last Zirilli-directed film we looked at on the site was the Dolph flick Acceleration, and while I enjoyed that, I didn't enjoy it as much as this because it had too many other elements that weighed the film down when it didn't need to, while this had a simple premise that I think they were able to add elements to--like Moran's character's development--in ways that didn't impede the fun and the action, which ended up enhancing the film overall. Like I've been doing with Shogun Films, I've also been following Zirilli on Instgram, and it's fun to see what projects he's working on and who he's working on them with. In that sense, like Sothcott, Jolliffe, and the rest of Shogun, Zirilli's a fellow fan who's making these movies for fans like us, and it's great to see it all come together like it did here.

Also from Nemesis we have Billy Murray and Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, with Murray as a part of the crew of retired soldiers, and Nerissa Sothcott as the Scotland Yard Detective trying to take Mandylor's crime syndicate down. Having Murray with Paul Barber and Ian Ogilvy really made that gang extra fun, which not only made it easy for us to root for them and be invested in their success, but also worked as a good juxtaposition from Moran's more serious character. I could see Murray in anything really, so to see him turning in such a fun performance is even better. With Nerissa Sothcott's character, I think because the only other main female character was Patsy Kensit's, and she was more set up as the damsel in distress at the end, we needed Sothcott's to make the film less boys club-ish. I also really liked how they used her character as the bridge to get Michael Pare's cameo in the film, because it both got us Pare in a way that worked, but also set up her character less as someone passively letting Moran and company take care of her Mandylor problem for her, but rather strategically weighing her options on whether or not this is a good play. Finally, with the human trafficking element to Mandylor's crime syndicate, Nerissa Sothcott's character also prevents the film from being too "women are helpless and need their White Knight male heroes to come and save them," and we especially get this kind of mitigation when Mandlyor's character makes a crack about Sothcott potentially dancing for him at his club, and she shuts him down. This is another area where Shogun gets it right. Most DTV flicks would take her role, whittle it down to a day's worth of shooting, and get a big name like Pare to play it so they can stick him on the tin. Instead, Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott takes the part and invests more in it, and the result is something we didn't know we needed, but helps to give the film more depth and make it more enjoyable--plus we still get our fun Pare cameo too.

Finally, two last points. First, I liked the way the film used London as a character by giving us these beautiful establishing shots of the city, the images we in the rest of the world think of when we hear "London;" and then jumping down into the grittier underbelly of gangs and organized crime that me on my 1997 class trip there was oblivious to--though I did see a man speeding the wrong way up a street in a stolen car, so there was that. The other piece was the use of Mandylor's character as an outsider by being an Aussie. Too often in the States films use African American or Latin American gangs as a way to depict this concept of the outsider "invading" a neighborhood, from which the overtones and dog whistles are obvious. Having the character be from a Commonwealth country though, we could have the outsider "invading" London aspect without the racism that usually comes with that approach. To further divorce it, we have Danny Trejo's character playing someone who's an adopted Londoner further depicting Mandylor and his gang as the outsiders. I don't know that this was a conscious decision, or more like "we have Louis Mandylor as the baddie, what can we do with that?" but I appreciated the way it worked out.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can get this through VOD in the States, and I think it's also available on Blu-ray in Germany. For the UK, January 30th it'll be available as well. This is well worth checking out. You can support indie filmmakers and enjoy a fun actioner while you do it. What's better than that?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11696276

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece (2018)

In furthering our celebration of Cynthia Rothrock joining the 40 Club, I figured I'd finally give this one a look. Not only does it have her, but two other 30 Club actors, Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Michael Dudikoff. On the other hand, for a film with all these names, it seemed suspicious that none of the other usual suspects had covered this, and it only had two critic reviews and 10 user reviews. Let's see if the suspicions were warranted.

Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece is, beyond being a difficult title to type, an attempted send-up of old grindhouse movies about a guy named the Fist who hilariously is both a martial arts fighter and a former porn star--trust me, I'm laughing on the inside. Stuff happens though, and he finds he has to fight people, along with a couple friends, and eventually that leads him to the head baddie, played by Michael Dudikoff. Other stuff happens, including a lot of dick jokes, fights, and all kinds of computer generated video effects, for roughly an hour and 40 minutes, and then for 7 minutes more stuff happens as the credits roll. But it does have a lot of names that make cameos, so there's that.

Between my 4th and 5th years of college--yes, I took five years to get my BA--I dated a girl who had two kids, one that wae three, and the other not quite two. One of the times I was over there, the mother was changing the not quite two-year-old, and while she was getting the diaper, he got away and started peeing. He was so fascinated that urine was coming out of his penis, that he ran over to show me, and I was like "yeah, it does that, isn't that crazy?" Beyond the fact that it's hard to think that that almost two-year-old is old enough to drink now, this movie smacked of a couple guys who just learned what their penis can do, and watching it, I felt like the adult saying "yes, it does that, isn't that crazy?" It wasn't just that the film was full of dick jokes, but they were like "penises are so great, I can't believe I'm just learning about mine!" Whether they were dick jokes or other kinds of jokes, they often didn't quite come off like they should have, and when they did hit, they didn't know when to stop. It was like if you've ever been at a party and told a joke everyone thought was funny, and another guy there thinks he's funny too, so he follows you around and tells you a bunch of jokes that for the most part don't work, but when one lands he goes back to that well over and over, and you're just trying to get away. There were some fun moments though. I think had it been shorter, had a comedic writer helped with the jokes, and if the two stars--one of whom was director and co-writer, the other of whom was the other writer--had not been in it and they left the film to the stars they cast, it might have worked. Unfortunately for me it was a miss, and I guess that's why it doesn't have more buzz considering those names.

Because I'm including this as part of the celebration for Rothrock joining the 40 Club, I'll start with her, even though she's barely in the movie. She has one quick fight scene, which was good, but we could've had more. For example, we had Jean-Claude Van Damme's daughter Bianca Brigitte, why didn't we have a fight scene between those two? That would've been more compelling than a lot of what we ended up with. Also, the big plot device was that our Fist character eats meatballs that have estrogen in them, and he loses his mojo. So too much estrogen means someone can't kick ass? Beyond the fact that that kind of joke was more appropriate in the 90s, how can you have kickass women like Rothrock and Bianca Van Damme and say that our hero ingesting estrogen makes him weak? I'll take the Pepsi challenge with Rothrock's stuff over this any day.

 

Close on Rothrock's heels for his own inclusion in the 40 Club, we're now at 38 for Don "The Dragon" Wilson--though it seems like two films we tagged him in, Saigon Commandos and The Siege of Firebase Gloria, have been removed from his IMDb bio, so he may only be at 36. In this he has a bigger part than Rothrock, which is nice. He played a fun send-up to the 70s Hong Kong martial arts master. I'd be interested to see how he did with more of these roles, like maybe something done by Michael Jai White who has a good mix of a keen sense of humor and fantastic martial arts skills. In Black Dynamite he had some send-ups to the old martial arts movie that came off really well, and the way Wilson carried his part off here, it would be fun to see what they could do together. As far as the 40 Club for him, he has three movies on Tubi that I can do, so that'll be easy to get one more--Scorpion King 4 is one I've seen, but didn't get any images before it was removed from Tubi, so I'm waiting for it to come around again. The question then is, where could he go from there? He's making more stuff, so we could potentially get another 10 movies from there, it's just a matter I guess of how many more older ones get dropped from IMDb for technically not having him in them.

We last saw Michael Dudikoff here back in January of 2020, and that was the first time since we'd done In Her Defense in 2011. This is now 33 films for him--he has 34 tags because we did American Ninja 2 twice--and I don't see us getting that many more unless he has a greater outburst of films, but that may be okay for him, he's already given us a lot of greats. His role here as the main baddie was one of the few real standouts in this to me. The Joker make-up combined with the maniacal nature, I'd love to see him do more crazy baddies in DTV flicks. Like if they ever made a DTV Expendables, where maybe you have Rothrock, Wilson, and Daniels as the heroes, they could have Fred Williamson as the Machine Gun Joe type, and Dudikoff as the baddie, and maybe Matthias Hues as his hatchet man. Oh, maybe add in Dacascos with that trio of heroes too. Should we tack on Gruner too? Anyway, let's get this DTV Expendables made, and load up all those names in a film all us DTV action fans can enjoy.

Finally, making a movie a comedy sometimes has the effect of insulating it from criticism. "Of course that was bad, you just don't get the joke, we made it bad on purpose!" I get that, and the point could be made that I just didn't get the humor here, or it wasn't my style. It just seemed like overall there wasn't a lot of cohesion, people just show up, there's a bunch of close-ups and sound effects, then they fight and CGI blood appears, and then we go to more things happening that make no sense, close-ups and sound effects, and more fights and CGI blood splatters. In once scene, there's this fight at the bagel burger place the hero and his friends work at, and he does this back kick thing to the baddies over and over. I get repeating the scene if you only have 60 minutes of footage and need to stretch things, but the movie was an hour and 47 minutes! It needed to cut things, not extend the joke. Another scene, the director's character kicks a baddie holding a gun, which causes the baddie to shoot another baddie. It was funny, but then they repeat it. Again. And again. Like over ten times. And it's like "it's hilarious, the guy keeps getting shot with CGI blood splatters and he's yelling in pain!" Going back to Black Dynamite or Machete and why those worked, I think a big part of it was the people making those lived in the 70s and 80s during the Grindhouse era, so they got the vibe better, whereas the guys making this were younger, more my age, and there was almost a sense that they were trying to remake Machete or Black Dynamite more. For me, this would've worked at 80 minutes, played a little bit straighter, but still as a comedy, with Don Frye's character as the hero. Just get rid of the characters played by the director and his co-writer, maybe do 30% of the dick jokes--which may still be more dick jokes than any other movie--and let the guest stars, of which there were many, do their things.

But ultimately we didn't get that, and what we did get didn't work for me. As of this writing you can get this on Tubi here in the States. Maybe if you're a completist of the stars like me, you make it happen, otherwise beware the siren song of all these names calling you in. It seems this was ignored by the usual suspects for a reason.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2490148

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The Lazarus Papers aka The Mercenary (2010)

This is one I've had on my radar for sometime, but it was having trouble making it to the States.  Finally Netflix got it on DVD, but I was hoping they'd make my life easier and put it on Instant.  No such luck.  Let's see how it went.

The Lazarus Papers has DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels as a white slaver in Thailand who kidnaps girls from the outer villages and brings them to the city to work as hookers.  One girl in particular he's kidnapped, Krystal Vee, has been selected for his marriage scam, where a man thinks he's buying one of Daniel's hookers for his wife, only to be robbed on their honeymoon by Daniels and left broke with no hooker.  When he tries this scam on Tommy "Tiny" Lister, he's busy doing drugs with his other hookers while Krystal Vee is stuck keeping Lister happy, and when Lister isn't, she kills him.  Lucky for her, as she's escaping, her other future husband, a man about to die of a terminal illness, sees her in the hotel hallway, and they run away together.  Oh, and DTVC favorite Danny Trejo is this guy who can't die and heals people.  He wants to die after Daniels kills his wife, and he's sees this terminal illness guy as a potential replacement.  But can he convince him to live forever?



At best this movie is clunky and plodding, at worst it furthers the Creepy White Guy Fetishizing Asian Women meme, and in between there's plenty of unintentional silliness that we can look at later.  First off, it's just kind of a weird movie, and not in a good way.  The idea of a girl from a small village watching her mother gunned down, then spending a year of hell as a Thai prostitute shooting drugs and contracting HIV, is just not a really fun story, and you need to be a top notch writer to be able to spin that story into something worth watching.  A weird white guy dying of a terminal illness working as the proxy for Creepy White Guy-dom is not that the thing to do that.  There's a scene after Krystal Vee is kidnapped where we see her suffering through her hell, taking pills with mascara stained tears on her face, and I couldn't help thinking "why are we doing this?", and here I'm barely ten minutes in and thinking that.  And to find out it's only to play out Creepy White Guy fantasies with some construct of a guy who lives forever and can heal people clunkily grafted onto it just left me feeling blah.  Daniels, Trejo, Vee, and Bai Ling as the madam were all solid, but they couldn't save this.

Let's start with Daniels, who is the film's resident Hall of Famer.  He actually does get a little martial arts on near the end, but he's a baddie so we don't really want to see it.  Also, he's not fighting anyone with comparable skills, so it's kind of a waste.  He does a good job as a baddie though, even though this kind of baddie is especially despicable.  I'm not sure though that the film ever really gets at just how bad he is.  Like the murder of Krystal Vee's mother and the year in hell as a white slave just seems to be like "okay, that happened, now enter weird white guy with money who only wants her companionship to save her."  None of this is Daniels's fault though, and he does the best that he can with the role he's given.



No, that's not Faker Danny Trejo, it's what people in this movie look like as they're crossing over to the other world.  Yes, that's right, we turn into the Faker version of ourselves.  It wasn't just a cheap way for He-Man to make money, by painting He-Man blue and calling him Faker, it was based on reality.  Who'd'a thunk?  This would've made for the best movie though, right?  Danny Trejo versus Faker Danny Trejo, maybe with Gary Daniels somehow involved.  Imagine the knockdown-drag-'em-out fights they'd have?  I'm seeing 2-by-4s, bottles, motorcycles-- hell, this could've been the next Machete movie!  The evil Conservative racists created their own Faker Danny Trejo to kill immigration reform and rally the country around their jingoistic cause.

All right, let's get into this Creepy White Guy thing.  When I was in college, I went to San Francisco for the American Anthropological Association meetings, and I saw a talk a woman gave on her paper called "Little Brown Fucking Machines Powered by Rice".  In it, she discussed this fetishization of Asian women by white men, and how it manifests itself in their interactions with Thai hookers.  The biggest thing she talked about was how these guys would want the woman to tell them how she loved them, and act like she was with them because she wanted to be, not because they were paying her.  We get all of that here, "I'm giving you the money because I want to help you, not to buy you," "you don't have to sleep with me if you don't want to..." "oh, I want to..."-- all the reassurances that he's not just another Creepy White Guy.  Then she transforms into the good Asian, diminutive, caring for him when he's sick, being everything these liberated white American girls supposedly are not.  It's one thing to see this kind of thing play out in a bad action movie where I'm not taking everything seriously, but this is supposed to be more of a dramatic picture exploring deeper themes, and all it is is the same Creepy White Guy grossness.



Watching the film I wanted to call this guy a Poor Man's Forest Whitaker, because he kind of looks like him, and had all his mannerisms.  Turns out he's Damon Whitaker, Forest's brother.  The brother is the best kind of Poor man's though, isn't it.  Don Swayze and Frank Stallone are two great ones that come to mind.  We also have Joe Estevez, though to me he's really more his own thing, not a Poor Man's Martin Sheen.  Anyway, Damon Whitaker was pretty much as described, a Poor Man's Forest Whitaker, and brought everything to the table you'd expect from a Poor Man's Forest Whitaker.

All right, so this is a pass for me.  Beyond the Creepy White Guy-ness, the overall story didn't work.  It was weird and clunky and, while we had some good performances, when the story is rough, what else can you do?  As I mentioned, this is available on DVD from Netflix.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1247400/

White Cargo (1996)

I don't know why I went in for this one. David Bradley is one factor. Shannon Tweed another. Tiny "Zeus" Lister a third. Is that enough to go out of my way to get my hands on something? I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that question...

White Cargo has Bradley as a jack of all trades independently wealthy police detective who works just for the fun of it, investigating a murder that leads him into a dangerous underground world of drugs, models, models as escorts, Asian and Italian mobs, and his ex-wife. Can he take the heat? He's David Bradley, if not, he can always pull one of those mini handheld fans out of his fanny pack and cool himself down, right?

Okay, no fanny packs here, just a lot of double-breasted suits. I don't know if I can recommend this, but I liked it. No real action other than the end. Not exactly stylish enough to be good Film Noir though, or sexy enough to be a sexy suspense thriller. It was just Bradley, betting on horses, investigating murders, trading proverbs with wise old Chinese men, eating pasta with Italians, playing blues on his guitar when his ex stands him up, and doing karate when people give him a hard time. Then there's Shannon Tweed, who is hot as a modeling executive, but she doesn't have a huge part; and Tiny "Zeus" Lister (Tommy "Tiny" Lister before I get a comment from someone trying to correct me) plays a bartender at the bar Bradley owns and lives above who helps him raid a drug warehouse. I don't know, it's a funny combination of stuff that just works as funny for me, but it may not for everyone else.

This might be one of Bradley's better roles, outside of the amazing Hard Justice. There's something about it that allows him to do what he does, without forcing him to overreach. It's as if it's so silly and over the top (Stallone style) that Bradley can't go wrong with how he plays it. Also, his martial arts, though not a large part of the film, when it's there, it's solid. All around, he enhanced the fun factor, which is a good thing.

What is that, Karl Kani Tiny "Zeus" Lister is wearing? Remember Karl Kani? It was like before Rocawear and Phat Farm, right? An urban Chessking, so to speak. If Color Me Badd wore Chessking, then Bel Biv Devoe rocked Karl Kani. I don't really know what Lister was doing here, like 90% of the film he's just a bartender, laughing at Bradley's jokes, holding onto money for him, and shaking his head when Bradley scores with a new chick. Then, apropos of nothing, he's sneaking into the drug warehouse to back up Bradley, and later wields a machine gun. Was that on his resume when he applied for the bartending job at Bradley's? "Ooh, you're handy with a piece, huh? And able to covertly enter heavily fortified buildings? Hmm, those are qualities I may need someday... I'll tell you what, I think you're our best applicant so far..."

This is like our fourth Shannon Tweed flick on here. You'd think it'd be more, but she does more erotic thrillers and sexy suspense yarns that aren't exactly what we do here at the DTVC. Her role in this was kind of odd, because at first it made sense, where she's the modeling agency exec who's getting her clients to have sex with rich people for big money (no whammies); but then she's kidnapped at the end of the film--why, I must've missed--and then is rescued by Bradley, which is when she decides that she too can handle a piece and knows the layout of the drug warehouse. There also wasn't a lot of her in this movie, which was a bit of a disappointment, just because she was one of the more talented members of the cast.

This guy here was like a combination of Brent Huff and Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate (and before more correction comments, yes, I know the Spanish word for hands is "manos"). It was just a cool novelty to have a character that was that combination of those two people. He takes the business end of a shotgun to the torso, which sends him five feet in the air and ten feet back into a bookshelf. Great way to go.

Amazon does have this on VHS, but you have to navigate some interesting titles to get there if you follow the link from the IMDb page. This is really for the big time DTV fan, and even then I'm not sure if it'll work for you. I don't know, it just has so many quirky attributes that as a whole, it all worked in a funny way.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114925/

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Hologram Man (1995)

This movie was thrust into my queue after I saw American Kickboxer 2 and wanted everything I could find with Evan Lurie in it. Of course, other things took precedence, from Dolph films, to getting more reviews for guys like Olivier Gruner and Gary Daniels, to our new Wild Card posts on Friday that spotlight mainstream films. Mr. Lurie, along with Hologram Man, was simply lost in the shuffle.

Hologram Man takes place in one of those futures that looks suspiciously like early 1990s LA, where John Amos and Joe Lara play cops after Evan Lurie's gang. In case you're wondering, Lurie's character is named Norman "Slash" Gallagher, and though a relation to the prop comic isn't explicitly mentioned, it's definitely apparent. Anyway, Slash is arrested by Lara after Lurie kills Amos, and Slash is sentenced to holographic detention, or something like that. His likeness is turned into a hologram, and an attempt is made to reprogram him. However many years later, a corporation has taken over LA, runs it like a dictatorship, and when Slash comes up for parole, they want nothing to do with letting him go. That's when the talking Daryl from Newhart turns Lurie into a walking hologram with special powers, and all hell breaks loose. Slash wants to start a revolution from the corporate dictatorship controlling LA, but Joe Lara knows that Slash's brand of government will be no utopia either.



I loved this movie. And I know you'll like it too, at least I hope you will, because if you're reading this there's already an unsaid agreement that films that start with shootouts where John Amos blows away bad guys with exploding bullets, and then some vehicle reappropriated from the Mad Max lot cruises in and blows up cars too, are the most amazing films ever. And if we have that unsaid agreement, then when an Evan Lurie (who also wrote this gem) rocking braids appears in hologram form, it's understood that we both feel like life can't get any better for us at that point.

Bad movies, or really any movies for that matter, are like wines. The person with no experience drinking them can only discern the difference between red and white. The novice knows what makes a Pinot a Pinot, and a Cab Sav a Cab Sav. It's the person who loves wine that can tell you what makes a Russian River Pinot different from a Chilean one, can taste fruits when everyone else can only taste alcohol, and will get angry if you buy him or her a bottle of Yellow Tail for Christmas. I realized just how much I was that way with movies, when I found myself knowing subconsciously what made Hologram Man a distinctly PM Entertainment bad action movie, as opposed to one of the Golan-Globus variety. I could spend days boring you with the minutiae between the two major action producers, but let's just say that in 2010, I'll be exploring more of PM Entertainment's contribution to the world of DTV.



Man we love us some Evan Lurie here at the DTVC. Again, it's a shame that he has such a small filmography. Who saw American Kickboxer 2 and didn't think this was one of the greatest men alive? imdb is very scant on details about him, so who knows if he's still alive, but he hasn't made a film since 1997's Operation Cobra. Seriously, Evan, if you're out there, and you're reading this, we love you. Get back in the game. Write Hologram Man 2 if you have to. Anyway, there are about 8 more films we can review from Mr. Lurie, so I guess I better do that before I go asking for more movies from him.

As much as Evan Lurie is awesome, Joe Lara really isn't. It is surprising that 400+ posts in, and this is the first time Mr. Lara has made an appearance. There are a few, like Armstrong, which I've been meaning to get to, so expect to see him a little more as 2010 rolls on. That may or may not be a good thing for everyone. You be the judge.



I should say something quickly about the science behind the holograms that become people in this film-- it's hilarious. I'm sure if you went over all the other reviews we've done here at the DTVC, you'd find occasions where I read someone the riot act for how ridiculous whatever they were selling us in terms of how realistic or plausible it was. In this case, to do that would make me look stupider than the holograms dipped in a space age polymer so they became humans again were. Sometimes it's better to sit back, laugh, and enjoy it, instead of being critical.

I got this on Netflix, which is a huge score considering the quality of film it was. That this is on DVD at all is amazing, and I'd rent it while you can before it falls out of print, which isn't all that unfathomable. As Martha Stewart would say "It's a very good thing."

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113318/

Santa's Slay (2005)

We're starting off our DTVC celebration of Christmas in style with Santa's Slay. What's better than an enormous Jew that was a former champion pro wrestler playing a murderous Viking version of Santa? Really, the better question is, what's more DTVC?

Santa's Slay has Bill Goldberg as an evil Santa Claus who was only nice to kids because an angel tricked him into a losing a bet on a curling match. To pay his end of the wager, he's had to spend the last 1000 years giving presents to kids, instead of killing them. Now the 1000 years are up, so he's headed to Hell Township in the Northern US to wreak some havoc. He's got a score to settle, and he'll take pleasure in killing anyone in his way. Now it's up to one high school kid, his girlfriend, and his grandfather, played by Robert Culp, to stop him.



This is pretty sweet. The cover leads one to believe it's a horror film, but really it's more of an action film with horror elements. The beginning is great too. It's your classic bad Christmas comedy film with a family that doesn't get along, and they even have cameos from actors and actresses like Fran Drescher, Christ Kattan, and an uncredited James Caan. Then Goldberg comes down the chimney, and kills them all, letting us know we're watching a different kind of Christmas movie. Everything from that point on is a joke, and I liked a lot of them, especially Santa and the angel curling. Everything you think of in a Christmas movie is turned into violence-- which is just how we like it.

My friends and I used to love watching WCW wrestling when I was in college, especially Monday Night Nitro. It was hilarious, between the characters and the NWO and all that. That being said, I was never much of a Goldberg fan. I don't know, Hollywood Hulk Hogan just worked better for me. Maybe if I was taking it seriously Goldberg would've been my man, but seeing how good he was here as an evil Santa, I realize him being serious as a wrestler was the real missed opportunity, because he would've made a great Hollywood Hulk Hogan type. I haven't seen Half Past Dead 2 yet, but I have a feeling he isn't as good in that as he is in this.



Robert Culp is great. We last saw him in the Olivier Gruner flick Mercenary, and he was great there too. His work has slowed somewhat over the past few years, with the bulk of his work after Santa's Slay being the less arduous voice work for video games, but that can be expected considering he'll be 80 next summer. Still, no matter what role he does, no matter how poor or how silly the film, he always brings his A game.

I'm not a big fan of Christmas, just so you know, and I didn't even want to do a week of Christmas films until the end of last week, when I just decided to go for it. I don't know, it's just the way this country is held hostage for one month every year, between the atrocious music, the crowds at stores, and the stupid Christmas specials on TV. Am I coming off too cantankerous? Perhaps, but I'm not sorry for it. Anyway, this movie let me watch as all the things I hate about Christmas are beaten into a bloody pulp by Bill Goldberg, and now I feel a lot better.



It's time for me to make a big confession: I have a thing for Fran Drescher. I know, the voice is an issue for some people, but I don't think she talks like that in real life, and if she does, it's still not an issue for me. I just thought she was so hot on The Nanny, even if the show itself did nothing for me and I've never watched a full episode of it. I was very disappointed when Goldberg killed her at the beginning of Santa's Slay. Also I thought I'd mention that the hero's girlfriend, played by Emilie de Ravin. People might know her from Lost, but she was also on the amazing syndicated show BeastMaster. Any chance I can get to bring up BeastMaster on this blog is goo. Oh, and don't get me started on why I think BeastMaster was a better show than Lost.

I better wrap this up before I get on a huge tangent. If you're looking for some off-beat Christmas viewing, this is a great place to start. It's not too long, very few dead moments, and a lot of fun to boot. A great way to kick off our holiday celebration.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393685/

Immortal Combat (1994)

I actually picked this up thinking it was a Roddy Piper film I'd seen on TNT after Monday Night Nitro almost ten years ago. In turns out it wasn't, and I'm still not sure what that movie was. I need a bad movie journal like wine connoisseurs have to make notations on movies I've seen so I'll remember them in the future. It's funny, because I'm a big wine drinker too, and I often run into the same problem when I'm at a store trying to pick up a bottle. "Have I had this before? I think so... but was it that vintage...?" Then I buy it and it's not what I was looking for.

Immortal Combat has nothing to do with the classic arcade game Mortal Kombat, and was probably just an attempt to the boost sales of a bad DTV action film, because in 1994, Mortal Kombat was itas far as what kids 12-34 were doing. This movie is about two cops, DTVC Hall of Famer Rowdy Roddy Piper and famed action star Sonny Chiba, who try to bust some party or whatever. Their partner, some chick who was in the party undercover, is murdered by some psycho who may or may not have been shot to death, and Piper wants revenge. Chiba can't join him on the quest for revenge, because he hurt his arm in the bust. Anyway, Piper goes to a Pacific island in pursuit of the baddies at some dubious company's compound, and finds out they're making nearly immortal warriors out of deceased fighters, and plan on selling the technology to warring countries. It's up to Piper to take down the company, get revenge for his partner, save the girl reporter he's fallen in love with, and crack the case.



This wasn't too bad, but it wasn't too good either. Chiba's not in it too much, as they have him back in the States recuperating from injuries he got in the opening scenes. That's too bad, because he an Piper have some great on-screen chemistry when they're together. I could see going this route if this film was like movie three in a series of Piper/Chiba buddy pictures, but it isn't, this is a one-time deal, and it's a shame the film makers couldn't see the opportunity they had. One of Piper's best assets is his sense of humor, and Chiba's a great straight man. They'd've been Rush Hour before Rush Hour.

Speaking of Piper, he definitely delivers. The first scenes with him are he and another guy telling their superior about the bust-went-bad the night before. As he describes it, we see it first hand with his tongue-in-cheek voice-overs. It's classic Piper as he delivers beatings and is funny as he does it. Later, when he gets to the Island to pursue the baddies, he meets this cute yet spunky reporter who's on the same trail. In order to melt her cool exterior, he invites her to dance in the water with him. It's spontaneous from the standpoint of the film, and romantic in the sense of the commercial for the Hugh Grant movie, where that scene is shown to try and get us to see the movie, but just seems trite and cliched. It works way more in the Piper DTV action film than the Hugh Grant Romantic comedy. Piper's the man.



I dug Sonny Chiba in this bad boy, and as I said above, it was too bad he wasn't in it more. He's in the beginning, and does these great action scenes where he beats a bunch of guys with the flat side of a samurai sword. It's one of those things where you want more, but don't get it until the very end, when he dons some ninja gear and helps Piper invade the bad company's compound. I've always loved Sonny Chiba, from the time I saw him in the Street Fighter movies back when I was a kid. It was sweet seeing him recently in Tarentino's Kill Bill as Hattori Honzo. He's close to seventy now, putting him in that category with Billy Dee Williams and Fred Williamson as great actors who are getting up there a bit but still going strong. I hope more DTV guys, like maybe an Albert Pyun, get their hands on him and use him for good.

Tiny "Zeus" Lister is also in this, only instead of being a baddie he's a good guy. He wears this hilarious hat early on, and Piper spares no time in mocking it. Later, he's killed by the bad guys and turned into an immortal warrior, but the good in him won't allow him to kill Piper. I liked that. It's nice to see a guy like Lister shake his bad guy stripes for one film and let us like him for a ninety minutes or so. I wouldn't want it all the time, but once in a while is cool.



I couldn't figure out who the bad guy in this was. I first thought he was the henchman in Whatever It Takes or CIA Codename: Alexa. Then I thought he might be one of the guys Bernhardt beats the crap out of in Bloodsport III. In fact he's none of these, but rather, Malibu from the old hit American Gladiators. In this he's sweet, because for whatever reason, he's dubbed, and the person doing his voice bears no resemblance to what's going on in the film. He'll laugh when his character doesn't seem to be laughing, or yell when it doesn't call for it. Just another one of those great things that makes bad DTV so charming.

If you're a Piper fan, this is probably worth a go to rent or whatever. Don't spend too much on it. I spent $5 on mine because I thought it was another film, and I'm not disappointed per se, but I certainly wouldn't recommend everyone spending that much on it. Renting it's the best option.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110117/

Men of War (1994)

A couple years ago, I visited some friends at my Alma Mater, UMaine. The plan was to drink, meet up with some of their friends who were also drinking, and hit the bars. When we got to the other friends, one of them had had a bit too much pre-game, and he was throwing up on a beanbag chair while laying on the floor. He seemed to have stopped, when I mentioned a girl I knew who liked the show JAG. Most were like, wow, that show sucks. But someone mentioned how hot Catherine Bell was. And that was it, the sick guy was throwing up again. And he threw up on cue at the mere mention of Catherine Bell or the chick from JAG from that point on. It was fascinating.

In Men of War, Dolph plays a mercenary hired by some pasty white collar types, one played by the guy from Dharma and Greg, and sent to a small South Pacific island to wipe out the natives and take the rich mineral wealth. He rounds up a crew of fellow mercs, including Catherine Bell and Tiny "Zeus" Lister, and takes them down there. He finds Trevor Goddard (Kano for those who don't know), who just happens to run the local police or something on the mainland, and has an axe to grind with Dolph.

They get that out of their system, and reach the island. There they find BD Wong and a hot chick, and together the two convince Dolph that he needs to help them. Dolph also finds out the mineral wealth is guano. The mercs split up into those with Dolph and those in it for the money, and the ones in it for the money storm the island with Trevor Goddard and the guy that ran the Double Deuce in Road House, and a final battle ensues, where Dolph and his merry band of mercs-turned-nice-dudes prevail.

Dudes of War is a pretty funny deal. In one scene a village elder, to show his unwillingness to sign some contract where his island will be taken over to be mined, chops off his right hand. Your guess is as good as mine on that one. BD Wong, being an American, sounds like John Pinette doing his trip to the Chinese buffet routine when he tries to act with an Asian accent.

The final fight between Trevor Goddard and Dolph is pretty sweet. Before it happens, Goddard blows up the guy from Road House, even though they're on the same team, because Goddard's nuts. His final battle with Dolph is second only to his trashing of Piper's yacht in Dead Tides. It's all pretty funny.

The real crux of this film is that white men love Asian women, and if a group of white men invade a village, it's possible to use that love to divide and conquer. Dolph falls for one, members of his team do too, and that's where the split occurs. It's not that Dolph felt destroying the village and it's people for material gain was wrong, he just wanted some. The film missed a great opportunity, though, by not having Catherine Bell hook up with one of the Asian girl extras.

In terms of overall Dolph, this film's got it all: ludicrous explosions, insane bullet dodging ability by Dolph, hot Asian women, BD Wong as a wise Asian who somehow has a Western college education, yet found the time to stay on his home island and learn its secrets inside and out, and Trevor Goddard as the highly unstable heel. I give it a 8.5 in Dolph-itude.

You should be able to find this for sale at like $5. I saw it on On-Demand recently for those who have digital cable, and I know ShowtimeXtreme and Encore Action where showing it, so it's out there. Don't pass it up, it's well worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110490/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/